Meet the billionaire trying to clean up the food supply: Todd Wagner.

Todd Wagner, a tech billionaire and Hollywood mogul best known for co-founding Broadcast.com with Mark Cuban, isn’t particularly well known in food world — but he’s increasingly having a big impact.Wagner first got interested in American food policy after noticing his migraines would all but disappear when he traveled to Europe. He did some research and realized that the U.S. was letting thousands of food additives onto the market without regulatory oversight. In 2023, Wagner and film producer Lori McCreary launched FoodFight USA, a non-partisan non-profit aimed at cleaning up the U.S. food supply. Since then, Wagner and his team have played an integral role in passing historic state food additive bans and are also pressing Washington to revamp food additive oversight nationwide. In this conversation, Wagner shares some behind-the-scenes details from meeting with California Gov. Gavin Newsom and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.He sees the fight against ultra-processed foods as similar to the fight against Big Tobacco: long, messy, and ultimately winnable.Highlights:– The inside story of urging Governor Newsom to sign the California Food Safety Act– What GRAS actually is, why Wagner calls it the linchpin of America's food crisis, and why no other country has an equivalent– The fight over New York's GRAS disclosure bill and what it would actually require of food companies– Why Wagner thinks the Big Tobacco playbook maps almost perfectly onto ultra-processed foods– Using AI to triage tens of thousands of food chemicals for post-market safety review– Front-of-pack labeling, the black octagon, and why warning labels matter even if they can't fix everything– The "real cost" of a can of Coke: subsidies, SNAP, downstream healthcare, and margin-stacking against smaller, healthier brandsWhere to find Todd Wagner:Food Fight USAFood Fight USA on InstagramFood Fight USA on XMentioned in this episode:California Food Safety ActNew York Food Safety and Chemical Disclosure ActYuka food scanning appUltra-Processed People by Chris van TullekenEnron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (documentary)Stay in touch:Sign up for Helena’s must-read weekly newsletter: Food Fix.Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.Send ideas and feedback to [email protected] out Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.